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Whats up at HQvB?

We're off to Australia.

Earlier this summer HQvB was selected by Travel Alberta International to launch an international campaign to help promote the province in Australia. This week we're off to Sydney to finalize production of an ambient campaign to run in the city's core. The campaign will kickstart an online social community aimed at bringing Aussies and Albertans together.

The campaign launches in three weeks, so check back here for news, pictures and videos.

HQvB takes OCAD intnernational.

We're finalizing production on a new campaign for OCAD to help promote their Executive Masters of Design in Advertising program. The campaign combines consists of an online short film, which will be seeded on advertising and marketing sites around the world, as well as print in the US.

We're super stoked about the effort, and our growing relationship with OCAD.

The Toronto Community Foundation taps HQvB for its first ever campaign.

We were asked to help raise awareness for this unique group that helps people start charitable foundations with the focus on making Toronto the best city in the world in which to live. With over $250 million of assets under management, the TCF is really making a difference, and we're excited to help them grow.

We currently working on a multi-media campaign that will launch in the new year.

The World's Number 1 luxury automotive brand short-list HQvB for its Canadian advertising account.

Porsche Cars Canada recently asked HQvB to pitch for their Canadian business. It's not often a new agency is selected to compete for such a prestigious brand, so we're pretty pumped. We're down to the final selection now and are working day and night on showing Porsche how to grow their already stellar brand in Canada. As with Porsche, when it comes to innovative thinking, there is no substitute to HQvB. Check back soon to see how we did.

CMOs Annoyed by Agencies, Ad Networks. From Ad Age

HP, Charles Schwab Mull Going Direct to Media Companies; Verizon Takes Online Partners to Task

By Jack Neff

Published: October 20, 2008
ORLANDO, Fla. (AdAge.com) -- Agencies and ad networks came in for some rough treatment at a CMO roundtable during the Association of National Advertisers' annual conference on Saturday as executives vented their dissatisfaction with agency models and ad-network performance.

Becky Saeger, John Harrobin and Gary Elliott
Photo Credit: Art Beaulieu

The chief marketing officers of Hewlett Packard and Charles Schwab openly mulled the attractiveness of bypassing agencies to work directly with media companies and other experiments as they look to fix an agency model they see as broken.

"The overall message, I would have to say, with HP, is that I don't think any of these [agency] relationships are satisfactory enough that we would continue them without having some degree of experimentation," said Gary Elliott, VP-corporate marketing at Hewlett-Packard. "We've been experimenting with different agency relationships where we're looking at agency partners and vendors in ways that connect them loosely with each other. We're looking at models where we have everything with one of our key partners."

Speed to market
What's lacking in agency relationships now is speed to market, Mr. Elliott said. "I don't think with our current system we're achieving that. ... We're going to pilot a number of different relationships where we go direct with media companies."

He pointed to publisher Meredith Corp. -- noted in remarks earlier by Booz & Co. consultant Chris Vollmer as Kraft Foods' agency of record for customer relationship marketing -- and Time Warner as candidates for such relationships.

John Harrobin, senior VP-marketing and digital media for Verizon Communications, echoed Mr. Elliott's thoughts on going direct to media companies.

"I don't think you can be a top-20 or -30 advertiser and not have that relationship with media companies," he said.

"If I were an agency, I would be really worried about being disintermediated," said Becky Saeger, CMO of Charles Schwab. "More and more the agencies are almost in the way sometimes. So there are people in this room who were at a talk this week where we had started to do strategic briefings for media companies so we know that they understand what we're trying to do with our brand so we get higher quality input and not have to rely on our media agency to be in the middle all the time."

Erratic performance
Not that media companies got unconditional love. Verizon's Mr. Harrobin pointed to the erratic performance of online advertising networks as one of the biggest hurdles to more media dollars going online and recounted some tough love Verizon recently visited upon the networks.

"We in late July saw three of our banner ads on sites that we absolutely would not want to associate with," Mr. Harrobin said. Verizon asked for a full report and assurance it wouldn't happen again, but in August it happened again, and Verizon pulled all of its online advertising except ads placed through AOL's Platform-A, where Mr. Harrobin said a process was already in place for preventing such problems.

Then Verizon called in representatives from 20 ad networks and laid down the law, which included no reselling, serving ads only on sites that have a direct relationship with the publisher and full transparency, and the ability to audit every site where its banner ads appear.

After Verizon gave the networks 30 days to comply, 18 of 20 did, Mr. Harrobin said, and Verizon resumed its online advertising Oct. 1.

Impeding growth
"Managing context of where your ad appears online with these networks is really vital," he said. He added that online video sites' refusal to allow pre-roll advertising is another major impediment to growth of online media.

"There are still doubts that [online is] as effective at telling a story as TV or has the reach," Mr. Harrobin said. "Thankfully, Hulu and MTV and others have proven that you can do this effectively without disrupting the customer experience. So I think that's going to help the market."

A great reminder of our rights as human beings.

Seth Brau, a film maker, designer and animator, created this video to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It's not only cool to watch, but in chaotic times reminds us that maybe we could be doing more for others.

The Snowball Effect

Here at HQvB our mission is to create ideas that get people involved with brands. Some people have asked us to explain what we mean, so we thought we'd do it here.

When sit down with our clients to create an idea, it could be a movement based around a cultural or social idea. It could also be a brand dialogue. It could be a service that the brand offers to it's users to make the brand experience more meaningful, or it could be an entertainment idea that is also a compelling brand experience.

At the core of our thinking is that whatever we do, the goal is to create an idea that gets people to not only feel something, but to act. And we always build in mechanisms so that people can share the experience in their social circle, be it online, or in the real world.

In this way we create what we call "The Snowball Effect", in which a group of people who are moved to be involved in an idea get others to be involved. They in turn get even more and, as the old shampoo commercial goes, so on and so on.

Which is just like like sending a small snowball down a hill. Once you make a small snowball and give it a push, it gets bigger and bigger as it rolls along downhill under it's own momentum. Soon you have a giant snowball.

The bonus for advertisers is that in today's world of smaller and smaller budgets, using this new thinking, a little goes a long way. You pay for a small snowball to be launched downhill and in no time at all, you have a giant.